Are we exploring our sound enough before making changes? Old guy musings...

[Telenator]

Tone is NOT the player. If I play a clean guitar, then jump into a dirty rig, my tone is completely different no matter how I choose to play. If I turn the tone on my amp from 12 to 0 my tone has changed, and yet it’s still me playing. “Tone is in the fingers” is such BS imho.

Your playing signature/fingerprint/nuance etc that identifies you as being YOU does however remain, regardless of what gear you’re playing through. The way the individual controls bends, slides into notes, controls the volume through picking dynamics remain, regardless of gear used. If you want to call that ‘tone’ then that’s your prerogative, but to me it simply isn’t ‘tone’

You have essentially contradicted yourself here. The point is not that an amp setting is impervious to your tonal influence.

The point is, as you touched on in your second paragraph, that a given person playing through a particular rig, on a given day, is going to impart their tone signature onto that gear. Another player may be handed that guitar a moment later, and while sounding somewhat similar to the first, will impart his own sound to the gear. It will be different.

Palm muting styles and pinch harmonics, and picking styles all contribute to the way a rig will sound. This is what is meant when we say "tone is in the fingers." I'm not going to pickup a guitar and sound like I'm playing through a flanger, then hand off to you and notice that you sound like you're playing through a fuzz pedal. Lets not be ridiculous.

 

[Durtdog]

The point is, as you touched on in your second paragraph, that a given person playing through a particular rig, on a given day, is going to impart their tone signature onto that gear. Another player may be handed that guitar a moment later, and while sounding somewhat similar to the first, will impart his own sound to the gear. It will be different.

That's playing style, not tone...by my definition.

 

[sax4blues]

Tone is from the fingers which turn the knobs. No matter what the rig Santana or Warren Haynes or James Hetfield are going to adjust all the guitar/pedals/amp controls to get as close as possible to their sound.
This is how I understand the OP. Do I really need three different OD and two channel amp? Or can I get very close just using the full range of a more simple rig.

 

[Marc Morfei]

Back to the original question, I have in the past been guilty of moving on too quickly from a piece of gear. What I learned over time was what the OP said: you can get almost any decent guitar or amp to sound good. You just have to set it up the way you want, adjust it, and adjust everything else in your chain to suit it. And sometimes adjust your playing style, which usually happens unconsciously.

I have cycled through lots of gear, and am super satisfied with what I have now. But really, a lot of things I traded away in the past would have been just as good.

 

[Cyberi4n]

You have essentially contradicted yourself here. The point is not that an amp setting is impervious to your tonal influence.

The point is, as you touched on in your second paragraph, that a given person playing through a particular rig, on a given day, is going to impart their tone signature onto that gear. Another player may be handed that guitar a moment later, and while sounding somewhat similar to the first, will impart his own sound to the gear. It will be different.

Palm muting styles and pinch harmonics, and picking styles all contribute to they a rig will sound. This is what is meant when we say "tone is in the fingers." I'm not going to pickup a guitar and sound like I'm playing through a flanger, then hand of to you and notice that you sound like you're playing through a fuzz pedal. Lets not be ridiculous.

Ok, have a nice day, I’m off to play some guitar rather than argue about it on the internet

 

[Telenator]

Nothing like a little "tone is in the fingers" discussion to bring out the best in all of us and warm the heart.
Maybe it's just semantics but, when I palm mute my guitar, the tone changes. I would love to all agree on these things, and I think we do to a large extent, but we use different words or meanings to describe the same things. Let's try to be conscious of that.

 

[schmee]

I imagine what guitar it is matters less to someone who can play, bend and spank 013-053 strings regularly!

 

[TX_Slinger]

Agreed. I have a Nobels ODR mini and a Fulldrive 2 Mosfet clone that give me a whole lotta clipping options to fool around with when I start getting that itch to swap pickups.

 

[Blues Twanger]

Who needs experimentation when we can just have the internet tell us what is better?

 

[hopdybob]

Bill Lawrence worked from the vision that a pickup is a part of a chain.
from brain to speaker and all in between.
and after many year i came to the conclusion that this is very true.
i can come close to someones tone if i have the $ ore € but the player is the part you never can clone in yourself.

one of the funny moments in my youth and aha moment was that i had THE Pearl OD pedal.
but i sold it because it did not do the wonder i had hoped for.
now i know that in big part in that failure was that i did not know how to use that pedal.

 

[Cheap Trills]

Twenty some odd years ago, I was traveling extensively as a pro photographer and had the good fortune of jamming with people all over America that I had met on a guitar forum.
I called it, Bob's Jam Across America Tour and had the privilege of jamming with forum folks in 25 different states over a 2 year period.

Sounds pretty awesome! Decades sgo, I studied to be a photo journalist dreaming to either do something like this or travel the world exposing injustice with pictures and words... Instead, I bent to the pressures of my parents and switched majors to something more "stable". Anyway, I'm jealous of the experience you had!

 

[String Tree]

Every electric guitar has a voice...

Twenty some odd years ago, I was traveling extensively as a pro photographer and had the good fortune of jamming with people all over America that I had met on a guitar forum.
I called it, Bob's Jam Across America Tour and had the privilege of jamming with forum folks in 25 different states over a 2 year period.

During that time, I was most often traveling guitar-less, and at the mercy of playing whatever I was handed, sometimes moments before an on stage appearance/gig, or a friendly jam at the local rehearsal studio.

Some the guitars were dead stock representations of the lowest price point Squier, Epiphone, Ibanez, etc, had to offer. Others were fine examples of heavily modified high end guitars. And I was grateful for the chance to play all of them.

The point here is that, when you're handed a guitar plugged into an unknown amp, you have to make it work. There is no time for fiddling around and dreaming of installing a set of custom pickups and playing it through a Dumble amp. You need to make your rig work. NOW!

So you start playing and looking for the safest, meatiest, blending tone you can get. As the night wears on, you start to hear the strong points of the gear you're playing, along with those areas you just need to avoid. If you're fortunate enough to be playing more than one set, you get a brief chance to twist the amp knobs a bit during break, and things usually improve going into the second set.

But most importantly, you are forced to squeeze the best possible sound, (for the gig you're playing) out of the gear that was just graciously handed to you. This changes everything about your approach to getting a good tone and has often surprised me by what was actually attainable using cheap gear. But it has also surprised me by how disappointing a high end, highly modified set-up can be as well.

Play whatever is in your hands at the moment, and enjoy the surprise of discovering some great sounds you weren't expecting. Put those sounds to good use and enjoy the way you alter your playing to make those unique expressions. It's a HUGE growth and learning experience. This the kind of stuff that makes us better players and expands the variety of what we can play by taking us out of our comfort zone.

A new set of pickups is often a fun thing to explore. Just don't give up on what you're already playing too quickly. There is so much more at stake!

All too often, people make changes as fast as they can.
The changes we make deserve as much consideration as we can give them.